there is a problem with datacenters. they have a huge footprint. they use a huge amount of electricity. much of the electricity they use is eating up renewable capacity and forcing us to keep natgas plants alive.

agricultural water usage in the county is 3.5 orders of magnitude larger.

Not a single person can explain why on earth someone overseas would give a UK politician £9 million. Even the stupidest people in the UK don’t believe there are no strings attached. Keep asking Farage why he took £9 million from someone who doesn’t even live in the UK.

The current situation concerning negotiations:

The US negotiations strategy looks like separate agreements first with the Russians, then with Ukrainians. The negotiations are taking place without the EU being present.

Three more Farage bloc MEPs alleged to have followed Russian asset’s script At least eight MEPs elected for Ukip or Brexit party now known to have been focus of efforts by jailed Nathan Gill

Three more Farage bloc MEPs alleged to have followed Russian asset’s script www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Where the Original ‘America First’ Leader Went to Die

@stephenrodrick.bsky.social visits Charles Lindbergh’s gravesite, recalling parallels with the man who picked up Lindbergh’s nativist scepter, Donald Trump.

Dispatch: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Know your rights. Protect your neighbors.

New York is — and always will be — a city for all immigrants.

Mamdani releases video overviewing Know Your Rights if you see ICE + promises to protect New Yorkers and the right to protest, specifically in response to anti-ICE action last Saturday that stopped a massive raid.

Comes following question from me asking for his comment on that action.

This just in: a NASA telescope may have just "seen" #darkmatter for the first time! By exploring the Milky Way's galactic halo and using the latest data, a team of researchers detected high-energy gamma rays extending towards the center of the Milky Way. Find out more here: https://ow.ly/OJe550XE40B

so... it's been DEI *for men* all this time?

Trump’s attack on DEI may hurt college men, particularly White men The Trump administration’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion also targets gender. The ban may impact gender balancing practices that often benefit college men.

Ending DEI practices in college admissions will expose an uncomfortable truth. Women now outperform men academically.

If universities stop trying to gender balance incoming classes but instead admit based on merit, they’ll reject men at higher rates than they do today.

Not only can the country absolutely afford to do a lot more good things that help people– in housing, healthcare, infrastructure, and environment– there is no reason not to do it. Pretty simple: We should do big things that help people and not do things that hurt people. bsky.app/profile/cost...

The entire R&D budget of the department of energy for renewable energy and energy efficiency is, or was, $3.5B. For the whole country! We should triple that number instead. bsky.app/profile/cost...

My teen, who had dreamt of being an astrophysicist, just told me he wants to go to law school because, “Science isn’t going to be a priority in the US in the future…I don’t want a job where I’ll be constantly worried my funding will be taken away.”

Gutting. How many future scientists have we lost?

It could take decades to recover from where we are.

Them: I've devised an exact formula for what we should invest in science and public health and education, see my 100 page PDF and then–

Me: I'm not reading all that, just triple it and go from there bsky.app/profile/cost...

Kremlin says new US security strategy accords largely with Russia's view It was the first time that Moscow has so fulsomely praised such a document from its former Cold War foe.

Kremlin says new US security strategy accords largely with Russia's view - www.reuters.com/world/china/...

This is precisely the tactic that brought us Heller and its progeny through Bruen to the present. Gun nuts made up an individual right and got that before a Supreme Court ready and willing to ignore the actual text and history of the Second Amendment.

I am growing quite tired of academics making things up and then claiming we have to debate them on equal terms.

There's a Crisis of Masculinity in this country and the only way to solve it is to let me act like a cross between a baby and a movie villain

Soon no Pearl Harbor survivors will be alive. People turn to other ways to learn about the bombing. Only 12 survivors of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor are still alive — all centenarians — and this year no one is able to make the pilgrimage to Hawaii to mark the event, scheduled for Sunday.…

“The idea of not having a survivor (at Pearl Harbor) for the first time — I just, I don’t know — it hurt my heart in a way I can’t describe,” said Kimberlee Heinrichs, whose 105-year-old father Ira “Ike” Schab had to cancel plans to fly in from Oregon after falling ill.

Tl;dr: The platform must be institutional reform, & the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over & over again & expecting different results:

<Everything> else - whatever Kitchen Table or civil rights or other policy issue you care about - <follows> from fixing our broken institutions & having multiparty majoritarian democracy. <All> of it. We keep doing it backwards, thinking Just One Popular Policy will fix it. It’s a category error.

- DC/PR/USVI statehood
- Enlarging the House
- MMDs
- New VRA
- Totally revamping SCOTUS: bsky.app/profile/mcop...
- Automatic universal voter registration
- Rewriting <all> the "national emergency" laws: bsky.app/profile/mcop...
- Subordinating the Senate: bsky.app/profile/mcop...
Etc.

There Is No Trolley Problem We actually aren't constrained into atrocious premises by thought exercises. Obstacles are a reason to fight, not an excuse to quit. Our friends and neighbors aren't distractions..

one of the most powerful essays i’ve read this year. by @juliusgoat.bsky.social

www.the-reframe.com/there-is-no-...

This is precisely why the platform must be institutional reform. We must brake the trolley & break the trolley.

bsky.app/profile/mcop...

🇺🇸 trifectas get <one> shot at doing something

Obama chose policy (ACA). It didn’t fix the authoritarian problem

Biden chose policy (ARP/IRA). It didn’t fix the authoritarian problem

The platform must be <immediate> institutional reform next time. Right from the start, as @dhnexon.bsky.social said

*It's hard! Ds have been fighting for a long time to conserve norms and institutions against R attacks! Those habits are *really* difficult to break. They require basic changes in style and rhetoric. Hell, I'm yelling about this all the time, but I often "snap back"... and I'm just an armchair prof!

5. FWIW, that's also why, if the pro-Constitutional Democracy factions of the U.S. political order ever get the trifecta, they can't wait to pass their reforms. They can't spend time hashing them out in committee. They need prêt à passer legislation.

3. That's another reason why anti-corruption is so central to the current political moment, and why Democrats need to discard their institutionalist dispositions* in favor of a "burn it all down, scorched-earth" attack on the regime that Trump and the GOP have created.